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Don’t bury $3 billion underground: Editorial

Mayor John Tory is determined to sink $3 billion in a Scarborough subway extension when light rail would provide far better service.

Toronto Mayor John Tory is determined to spend $3 billion to bring one additional subway station to Scarborough. (Richard Lautens / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Mon., July 11, 2016

The amount Mayor John Tory intends to pay for a single subway stop is enough to give almost $5,000 to every man, woman and child in Scarborough. (Perhaps they’d like that more than a subway that most won’t ride.)

It would just about cover the cost of policing Canada’s largest city for the next three years. Or it could provide almost half the money necessary for a massive subway “relief line” vital to alleviate crowding on the existing system.

Instead, Tory is determined to spend $3 billion to bring one additional subway station to Scarborough. He insists it’s a good deal and that residents of the area deserve it. In fact, it will leave them shortchanged — along with the rest of the city.

That’s why there’s an effort expected in city council this week to derail Tory’s goal of pushing the Bloor-Danforth subway out to Scarborough Town Centre. As revealed by the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro, a motion is heading to the floor of council to scrap this ill-conceived route and return to an earlier plan for ultra-modern, multi-stop, light-rail service.

Building a Scarborough subway was a major plank in Tory’s election platform. The initial three-station line has been whittled down to a single stop, but the mayor seems bent on delivering at least that, regardless of cost.

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Sources say there’s serious arm-twisting underway at city hall to ensure that councillors don’t break with the mayor on this. The Toronto Transit Commission has produced and circulated a timely briefing note warning that earlier cost estimates for light rail can no longer be relied on. And Tory recently paid a round of visits to newspaper editorial boards, including the Star’s, to press for his subway vision.

He was on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning on Monday arguing that extending subway service to Scarborough Town Centre would bring an urban renaissance to an economically stagnant part of Toronto.

This one additional stop is vital to “stimulate much-needed jobs and investment,” he said, adding that people 25 years from now will be glad it was done.

Tory relied on the same “if you build it, they will come” argument at the Star’s editorial board. But it’s always risky to base such high expectations on the impact of a single subway development. Toronto’s lamentably underused Sheppard subway provides ample evidence that if you build it, they might just stay away. At least this woebegone five-station line cost only $1 billion — a bargain compared to Tory’s one-stop escapade.

When evaluating transit options, the public would do well to steer clear of concepts that have little to do with moving people efficiently from one place to another. If the mayor’s primary aim is to stimulate employment and economic development in Scarborough, there are surely better options than adding a $3-billion subway stop.

To put that figure in context, it’s almost as much as what Queen’s Park spends yearly through its decade-long Moving Ontario Forward infrastructure plan geared “to create jobs and growth across the province.”

Scarborough residents have long felt — with justifiable cause — that they’ve been treated unfairly in the distribution of civic assets. From parks to cultural amenities, other parts of Toronto receive more.

Unfortunately, their resentment has crystallized around the lack of subway service, obscuring the fact that building light rail would give far more people in Scarborough more and better access to public transit. For their sake, and that of taxpayers, $3 billion should not be sunk underground.

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